WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

FACTORS INFLUENCING THE USE OF PRENATAL DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES …
This sex ratio is higher than the sex ratio of 108 for children of age 0-6
years at the time of the census. As in India child mortality is higher for
girls than boys, the child sex ratio should have been higher than the
SRB. The discrepancy could be indicating either a rise in the SRB
during the years preceding the census, or underreporting of female
births that occurred during the year preceding the census, or greater
exaggeration of age for boys than girls in the census. The foregoing
analysis of child sex ratios by single years of age strongly supports the
first possibility.
The census data on children ever born show a steady rise in the
SRB from 105 for women aged 15-19 to 113 for women aged 45-49 in
2001. This is probably due to the failure of older women to report
female children who died many years ago or who are married and
living with their husbands. To minimize the effect of such recall errors,
Table 2 shows the SRB implied by the data on children ever born to
women age 20-34 years. In all, these women reported 238 million live
births in their lifetime, with a SRB of 107. As these children were born
on average 5-10 years before the survey, they would be indicating a
SRB lower than that for the year preceding the census if the SRB has
been rising.
Interestingly, the data on births for the year preceding the census
shows negligible rural-urban difference in the SRB, whereas data on
children ever born shows, as expected, higher SRB in urban areas (108)
than in rural areas (106). This may be indicating either that the ruralurban
difference has disappeared in more recent years or that rural
women have underreported more female births that occurred during
the last year than urban women. But the analysis of child sex ratios by
single years of age did not indicate a convergence of sex ratios in rural
and urban areas. For example, the child sex ratio for the age group 0-2
years in 2001 was 111 in urban areas compared with 108 in rural areas.
The analysis of the increase in child sex ratios since 1981 by singleyears
of age (similar to the one shown in Figure 1) showed that the
SRB may have increased by eight percentage points in urban areas
compared with five percentage points in rural areas. It is therefore
likely that in the census data on current fertility, the underreporting of
female births was more acute in rural areas than in urban areas.
However, data on current as well as lifetime fertility show that the
SRB increases with mother’s educational level. The data on births for
the year preceding the census show that the SRB increases from 109
for illiterate women to 115 for women who have completed matriculation.
But those graduated from college have reported a SRB of 114.
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